1. Technical Field
The present invention pertains to the field of charging a fee for information provided over a network. More particularly, the present invention pertains to a method of handling access to information over the Internet in a way that makes feasible a quite small charge per access, and does not require the consumer to have an account with the information provider.
2. Description of Related Art
Many information vendors on the Internet are accessed by consumers only once or twice for only small amounts of particular information at a time. To operate competitively, the information vendor must charge the consumer only a few cents for each access. Because of the small charge, the overhead in charging a consumer must be kept under tight control. In addition, the method used to charge for the access must verify that the consumer will pay. Early solutions to these problems relied on using a central authority to verify access, slowing down the transaction. The challenge of keeping overhead low and providing rapid access persists.
There are essentially two approaches to the pay-per-access problem: token-based and account-based. Protocols are built up around methods based on each of these approaches; a protocol, as used here, is a specific implementation of a method of charging for a consumer's access to a vendor's information.
In general, token-based methods have a consumer purchase electronic tokens from a bank. To access a vendor's information, the consumer will pay the vendor using the tokens. The vendor can then go to the bank and deposit the tokens or redeem them for money. An account-based method works like a charge-card method of paying for merchandise. A consumer authorizes a bank to transfer funds from the consumer's account to a vendor's account in exchange for receiving information from the vendor. The funds transfer is performed by the bank.
Token-based methods, compared to account-based methods, are generally considered to have the potential to achieve lower transaction costs, but do not by themselves meet the challenge of providing rapid on-line clearance. The account-based methods certainly meet the challenge of providing on-line clearance, but these kinds of methods often tend to fall short in meeting the need for rapid access at low cost.
Protocols have been proposed by credit card companies that essentially model the credit card system on the Internet. Because these methods use accounts identified by consumer name, they fail in providing another desirable characteristic: consumer anonymity. On the other hand, token-based methods have been developed that do provide consumer anonymity. However, in both the token-based methods and account-based methods developed so far, overhead is usually too high to process transactions for which only a small charge is made, and all the methods require on-line verification, which unavoidably slows a transaction.
Much of the prior art, whether for an account-based or token-based method, can be understood in terms of FIG. 1a. In either kind of method, a consumer 19 first makes a payment to a broker 17 in exchange for scrip. The term scrip is used here in a generic sense to indicate a data object used in place of money. As such, the term encompasses both tokens and authorization to charge an account. The term payment is used here to indicate conveyance by a payer of money, as opposed to scrip, such as by a personal check, or authorization to charge the payer money, such as by charging a credit card owned by the payer.
With the scrip purchased from the broker 17, the consumer can purchase information from an information vendor 18. To do so, the consumer requests the information he wants using the vendor's interface, which usually indicates to the consumer the cost of the information. The vendor's interface to the consumer will take scrip for the amount charged for the information, and send the consumer the information. Finally, the vendor will redeem for payment from the broker the scrip the vendor has collected. The vendor may of course make the redemption at a later time so as to redeem scrip from multiple users.
This model is easily applied to token-based methods, and in these methods there is sometimes one additional exchange: the vendor may make change, returning scrip to the consumer equal to the amount tendered less the amount charged. But the model also applies to account-based methods. In these methods, the scrip is usually simply credit-card information, and the broker is a credit card company. The difference is that in account-based methods, a consumer's use of scrip to pay for information is actually the exercise of a pre-approved loan.
In all of these methods, the information vendor and the consumer interface directly in the pay-per-access transaction; i.e. the consumer sends a request for particular information with scrip to pay for it, and the vendor provides the information. In doing this, the vendor ensures that the scrip is authentic by checking that the consumer has an account adequate to back the scrip. This requires either that the consumer have an account with the vendor, or that the vendor get clearance to accept the scrip from a central authority. There are three obvious difficulties with such approaches: either a consumer must have a lot of accounts, one with each vendor; or a central authority must be used for each purchase, slowing the access and raising the transaction cost; or, finally, every vendor must develop the capability of handling scrip, which may slow access, depending on what the vendor must do with the scrip.
What is still needed is a method of charging for each access in a way that is secure but fast, and that keeps overhead low. One way to do this is to involve the vendor as little as possible. The interactions that keep costs high or slow access are those needed to ensure that a consumer's scrip is bona fide.